What a Christian should fear
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
November 10, 2024—Proper 27B
Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17; Mark 12:38-44
What makes any given person feel as though the world is ending? As Advent approaches, this question is already in the air: Advent, with its talk about the end-times; Advent, which begins with the question of why it is this world needs a savior so desperately in the first place.
So what do we believe we need saving from? Clearly, it isn’t the same for everyone. Election seasons make that eminently clear, as people not only vote for the things that sound like life and possibility to them, they also vote against the things that they feel threaten the world around them.
Which means our actions in an election, and our responses to the results, will tell us a great deal about what we most value. What cuts closest to the bone. And, for better and for worse, what scares us.
For many in our country, clearly, what scares them is the question of how they can afford to feed their families. For others, it’s the question of how we cope with unmanageable numbers of people fleeing their own countries to reach for something better here. What scares others just as much, of course, is the spectre of mass deportations and the unimaginable suffering and chaos that will ensue. For many, and perhaps closest to the bone of our community, there’s the fear that leaders who campaigned explicitly on anti-Trans rhetoric (and implicitly on the kind of “family values” that opposed marriage equality for so long) will in fact follow through with policies that threaten our beloveds’ freedom and flourishing.
It has been a campaign season shot through with fear, and riddled with the language of crisis, which means that a sense of crisis persists. That is the current reality, and nothing I say here today can make that disappear. In a way, I wouldn’t even want to. Because there’s actually something about a sense of crisis that (bear with me here) brings out the deeper reserves in humanity. Yes, we get pretty messy when we’re actually caught up in it, but in many ways, we’re better at crisis than we are at the day to day. More responsive to a big tragedy than a long-term problem. More likely to pay attention when our attention has been grabbed dramatically. More motivated, more committed, more creative in our thinking when we are convinced that the world is ending.
Not to mention: far more acutely aware of the world’s desperate need for a savior. And I don’t mean the political kind, of either party. The savior I mean, the savior we need no matter the outcome of any election, is the one we see today in the gospel. The one who stands in the Temple (the place where heaven and earth are supposed to be most closely joined), and watches a poor widow (literally the poster child for the socially and economically vulnerable) throw her last two coins back at the Temple treasury that should have been taking care of her, but obviously wasn’t. In response to which, our savior proclaims the destruction of this so-called religious establishment that has strayed so very far from the ways of God.
We won’t hear that part of his response until next week, of course. The church splits the story, which has often allowed us to understand the story of the widow’s mite as nothing more than a lesson about generosity. That’s the surface meaning, yes, but its deeper purpose is to express what scares Jesus when he looks at the world, which is the capacity of God’s people to neglect the poor and enrich themselves. It’s also one of many stories about Jesus directing his disciples’ attention to those with little social standing. Which means it’s also a story about her, about a woman who took what little she had and used it to do the only thing she had the power left to do, which was shame the religious establishment, effectively declaring, “You have taken everything, and left me to starve.”
Ruth and Naomi demonstrate a similar desperate imagination. Both of them also widows, stripped of the economic and social support of a husband and his family, they choose to face this crisis together. Having brought her beloved daughter-in-law back to her homeland, Naomi selects a suitable husband for Ruth and devises a plan. They too use what little they have: Ruth’s beauty, a bit of food, and a healthy dose of alcohol. With this, they will … seduce Boaz into marrying her. It’s a good plan, if a trifle devious, but it all works out for the best, so the bible calls it good.
Together, they rose to their crisis. Just as the widow in the gospel rose to hers, with everything she had. And Jesus was there, to give voice to her silent protest. The savior of the world (the savior we need) cries out when the powerless are trampled; cries out, when the poor are neglected by those who claim to follow God; cries out, when the hurting and the wounded are left to suffer.
He is there, in the crisis. There, when everything feels like the end of hope. There to sit with us quietly through the long dark night of despair … the Dream of God thrumming underneath the silence … Slowing us down. Putting us back together.
And he is there, when we are ready to act. There to fill the people of God with his power of loving service. There to lead us back into the work of repairing the world. Which has always been the work, to be honest. And to be even more honest, it always will be. No matter what the result, in any election.
Thanks be to God for his power working in us, to do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Amen.